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US physically hacks 100,000 foreign computers

150 points by kostyk 13y ago

dmix 13y ago
...And sentators are still debating bulk phone records (the first Snowden leak from six months ago) and can't even decide whether or not the NSA should require rubber-stamp court orders to access them. What are the odds senators will debate the privacy implications of hacking routers all over the world (let alone stop them from doing it)? I'd bet almost zero.
- srl 13y ago
  The article didn't say they hacked routers. > The NSA calls the effort an "active defence" and has used the technology to monitor units of the Chinese and Russian armies, drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and US allies including Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, the Times reported. From the viewpoint of an American: hacking the EU trade institutions, and India, bothers me. The rest is exactly what the NSA et al /should/ be doing. Saudi and Pakistan are "allies" out of necessity -- there is no history of genuine mutual trust and support. There certainly needs to be more control of who the NSA targets, and better constraints keeping them from targeting others, but pretending that all spying is bad is silly.
  - amirmc 13y ago
    > "... there is no history of genuine mutual trust and support." Trust is supposed to work both ways. Before dismissing countries such as these it's worth looking at the history of relations from both sides.
    - RexRollman 13y ago
      Trust. But verify.
      - loup-vaillant 13y ago
        No. When you're managing someone, there is a status asymmetry that makes it okay. If on the other hand, a "mere" developer verified his manager's work, it would be perceived as rude. In the case of countries, any such asymmetry is meant with resentment. It is fine that the US spies on, say, Iran? Then it means Iran has lower status than the US. Then it means that an Irani citizen (denizen?) is worth less than an American citizen. While we're at it, why don't we show what we're made up of? Knocking down a building or two should teach them a lesson… It doesn't really matter that it is right or wrong to spy on another country. But it sure is dangerous, should you ever get caught.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - mkaziz 13y ago
    Cool, let's bomb their women and children, blow up their weddings and funerals, and then let's hack their computers because they don't "trust" us.
    - abduhl 13y ago
      As long as we are appealing to emotion here, let's not forget that Saudis composed nearly 80% of the 9/11 hijackers that killed our women and children and blew up our workplaces. Saudi Arabia has done little to engender trust.
      - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
        And yet we have pursued no actions against Saudi Arabia... I wonder if they have something we really need that is stopping us from declaring faceless or outright war on them?
        mkaziz 13y ago
        Black gold.
        ItendToDisagree 13y ago
        Texas Tea.
      - loup-vaillant 13y ago
        Let's count. On the one hand, put every non-US citizen killed by the US. On the other hand, put every US citizen killed by all other countries and terrorists combined. Guess which number is vastly bigger than the other. 5-10 thousand dead in 9/11? That's peanuts, compared to the disproportionate responses that ensued. (I'm not saying it's peanuts in an absolute sense. It's still a tragedy, of course. Any death is.)
        abduhl 13y ago
        Yes, let's. You take care of the non-US citizen part and I'll give you a low-ball for the US citizens killed by other countries number. If we use this handy wikipedia page shown below we can see that US military casualties are at a touch over 1.3 million. Let me know when you're done being facetious and/or have an answer for your number of non-US citizens killed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualti...
aet 13y ago
Why post an Al Jazeera summary of an NYT article that has already been posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7061012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7061012
- krelian 13y ago
  I think the NYT article didn't hit the top spot. This one has a more sensationalized title and will probably perform better. I guess you have to know your audience.
- yen223 13y ago
  So that in the future, you can cite two sources for this piece of information.
- hnisforpolitics 13y ago
  Al Jazeera has significantly more hipster cred than NYT.
curmudgeoned 13y ago
How many personnel does it require to physically compromise 100,000 machines? 1,000 people gaining access to 100 machines a piece? 100 people, breaking into 1,000 machines? Is that per year or in general? If one targeted individual owns 10 machines, then it's 10,000 people targeted by the program. If this includes organizations, bussinesses, institutional computer labs and offices, then maybe it's 1,000 offices with 100 work stations each. So, perhaps a rough estimate of the scope of the program 100 to 1,000 staff attacking between 20,000 and 1,000 targets?
- Aqueous 13y ago
  More likely no personnel was required because they simply paid off American manufacturers to implant these circuit boards in computers they knew were going to be shipped and used overseas. The bottom line, though? This isn't surprising. Nations spy on each other. A lot of nations have been engaging in a lot of phony outrage over our NSA spying who are doing the exact same thing, but have managed to keep it secret. Any nation who is using imported computers in sensitive operations should know enough to check those computers for possible spy hardware.
  - kingkawn 13y ago
    I would be surprised if they didn't simply have them installed in all machines and only have them activated in 100,000 devices overseas. Logistically seems simpler to coordinate if component-cost is a non-issue for the agency.
    - w_t_payne 13y ago
      That is the logical implication.
      - grkvlt 13y ago
        No, that is an insane implication.
        13y ago
icantthinkofone 13y ago
Still they're about 100,000 computers behind the Chinese.
higherpurpose 13y ago
And yet they have very little to show for it. I'd say that at the very least there needs to be a discussion about how cost-effective this whole operation is.
- jbigelow76 13y ago
  >And yet they have very little to show for it You mean they "possibly" have very little to show for. This article is about bugging other nations, not terrorists. There is a lot of value to the NSA if they can claim they thwarted a terrorist attack. However there is no value to the NSA to declare that they are actively monitoring, in theory, advancements in Chinese stealth research just to prove to the citizens the tax dollars are well spent. Without knowing more about how the information was leaked and what was leaked there is no way to determine if this particular NSA activity was "worth it" or not.
stordoff 13y ago
I don't believe that the NYTimes article [1] supports Al Jazeera's title of "US physically hacks 100,000 foreign computers". That seems to be the total number of CNE operations, not just those using hardware devices. > [NSA] has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world [...] While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of [covert radio channels] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us/nsa-effort-pries-open-computers-not-connected-to-internet.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesworld&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us/nsa-effort-pries-open-c...
pnathan 13y ago
A question - how long of a lifetime would this sort of operation expect to even have? If you're shipping units en masse out, it seems rational to expect that eventually the cover would be blown when supply chain analysts send components to a reverse engineering company and get a report back.
belluchan 13y ago
None of these articles about this say the source of this information was Snowden. It also doesn't seem to be his M.O. to leak about non-privacy invading bits. Like nothing here really pushes any buttons for me other than it was leaked. A separate leak?
- timdiggerm 13y ago
  Either that or your concept of his MO is wrong.
- unreal37 13y ago
  Agree this goes against the Snowden trend. Probably not him. But since they're claiming to hack the Chinese, Russians, Saudis, and Pakistanis, this very well could be an "authorized leak" to counter the Snowden leaks. Like, the NSA actually does go after their enemies (as well as their friends). Very few Americans would oppose to them hacking Chinese Army computers.
- mtgx 13y ago
  Probably from the NSA itself, trying to do damage control through carefully controlled leaks that put them in a good light. "New leak says NSA spies only on the bad guys".
- declan 13y ago
  The Al Jazeera English article that sparked this thread was summarizing yesterday's New York Times article, which mentioned Edward Snowden's name five times.
PaulRobinson 13y ago
"Weeeeeeeeee!" The sound of Dell, Intel and other hardware tech stocks of US firms plummeting over the next 12 months as they realise they can now only sell domestically as nobody else in the World trusts them any more. Tens of thousands of jobs lost here. And of course, they'll blame it on Snowden. It was classified in part because tens of thousands of jobs relied on it. But you have to wonder if there isn't just a little bit of an air of the two-faced about this...
- sp332 13y ago
  If tens of thousands of jobs were at stake, maybe they shouldn't have done it in the first place. The NSA did the crime, Snowden just told us about it.
- relic 13y ago
  So it is your understanding that the US has only now just started spying on foreign countries? Capable nations have been spying on friends and foes for a long time, and they will continue to do so, exposed attempts will only change implementation. If countries decided they were not going to buy foreign technology, the majority of those countries would have no technology. You think Saudi, for example, will just start manufacturing their own hardware?
  - PaulRobinson 13y ago
    I think Silicon Valley thrived for being the centre of the best technology in the World and the assumption that as a free and liberal nation it would not be as encumbered with spyware as hardware from say, China (which last year gave us the bluetooth malware clothes iron!). That perception is now gone. The valley will suffer. Why buy Intel when I can license the blueprints for ARM, build my own chip-fab plant for less than $1 billion and build a processor myself? And if I can do that, how much more investment do I need to build my own motherboards, displays and other components? $10 billion? Saudi makes that in oil money in a week. You really think they're going to keep buying US tech? The golden age for US tech firms is now over, and the idea that "of course" the US was spying is laughable: the assumption was always that the spying was targeted and not carte blanche over entire populations.
at-fates-hands 13y ago
>>> and has used the technology to monitor units of the Chinese and Russian armies, drug cartels And how is that going for the Drug Cartels? Doesn't seem to have an effect on them, considering they continue to operate with imprudence.
- josefresco 13y ago
  Gathering intelligence and taking action based on that info are two vastly different things each with their own pros and cons. Sure the US could take military or covert action against the drug cartels, but then where would American and other customers get their drugs? Who would then supply them? Sounds like a recipe for a new turf war (simply replace the existing cartels with newer, and possibly more ruthless groups) I'm not saying the US is allowing this, just that dismantling the cartels may bring a whole host of unwanted side effects.
  - dailyrorschach 13y ago
    Indeed, I’m reminded of a great Season 2 episode of the West Wing, and though fictional, points out that to go up against and wipe our a drug cartel in the jungles of Colombia would require a 10 to 1 troop ratio to secure victory. Many of these narcoarmies have over 20,000 soldiers, so we’re talking quite a large expeditionary force. Certainly something to think about. Not to mention it would be a jungle war and likely resemble insurgencies. And as you note, someone will fill that void.
    - at-fates-hands 13y ago
      Most of the drug cartels have left the jungles and are now operating back in urban areas: http://www.vocativ.com/video/colombian-cocaine-factory/ http://www.vocativ.com/video/colombian-cocaine-factory/
    - josefresco 13y ago
      Mexico isn't Columbia, and 20K poorly equipped and trained "civilian" fighters are no match for well trained, well equipped US military personal. We've heard the same arguments for years about the terrain in Afghanistan and our (I'm from the US) guys seem to do quit well even on a level playing field (see the early days after 911 when the US dropped in small groups of CIA special forces). I loved the West Wing but feel they relied too heavily on the "Vietnam/Jungle" angle when proposing the feasibility of an actual "drug war" in Columbia. Also, the West Wing was aired before many of the US's major military actions in the middle east, which have arguably proven that the US can combat an insurgency (if they care enough to that is) and can operate in an "unconventional" manor. I think the worries of getting sucked into another Vietnam, or getting bogged down like the Soviets in Afghanistan have been debunked. As long as the political will is there, the US military can operate successfully in almost all combat scenarios.
ForHackernews 13y ago
> monitor units of the Chinese and Russian armies Isn't this what they're supposed to be doing? I don't really have a problem with intelligence gathering against non-allied nation state actors. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cryMVK1PwuQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cryMVK1PwuQ
- kperry 13y ago
  I am with you. Nice job NSA. In fact, this "technology" doesn't really surprise me at all. If an article came out that said, "NSA can't hack a computer unless it is connected to their own private LAN," then I would be pretty disappointed in my tax dollars at work :)
  - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
    Seems like a good way to ruin a subsection of international commerce to me! Good job guys! A++ Would trust again!
- pvarangot 13y ago
  > Isn't this what they're supposed to be doing? I don't really have a problem with intelligence gathering against non-allied nation state actors. Shouldn't you have a problem with them getting caught then? I don't understand this defense of the NSA, no, its not what they are supposed to be doing. At least not anymore. If you are in favor of the US bullying and spying everyone they don't consider an ally then you should be outraged they can't do it efectively. They got outed by a lone contractor and your "potential enemies", or however you get to call every single other country in the world to justify the spying, now have most of the technical details they need to thwart the NSA's efforts and hence make it spend lots of your taxpayer dollars in coming up with other forms of spying.
  - ForHackernews 13y ago
    > I don't understand this defense of the NSA, no, its not what they are supposed to be doing. At least not anymore. What are they supposed to be doing, then? Should the US just not have any spy agencies? Should it shift away from signals intelligence and focus on human intelligence like Israel does?
rolandukor 13y ago
The way I see this is that it is pretty much business as usual. I think that anyone who sincerely believes that capable states do not employ similar tactics within their spy apparatus is engaging in self delusion. States have historically spied on each other (allies and enemies). I can understand the sensationalist aspect of this as 'news', but IMHO there is nothing new here; move on. Perhaps, someone here with a much better command of history than I do could help out with the latest time in history where the relevant technologies of the day were not key parts of nation states' intelligence gathering systems.
waterside81 13y ago
Anecdotal evidence, but here goes. We sell software to countries worldwide - just recently we've had new customers state that they will not buy from us if we're hosting things on Amazon EC2 (which we do). They're insisting we distribute our software in such a way that it can be hosted internally on their own infrastructure.
john_b 13y ago
> The NSA calls the effort an "active defence" Newspeak is real. Even if the NSA is telling the truth about this only being deployed against foreign targets, the scale of this effort is impressive.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  That's hardly newspeak. A key part of any good defense is information. Infosec to protect your own information is not sufficient. Thus, information gathering is an active part of defensive operations. Imagine you are an antimalware company (a real one, a good one). Maintaining a virus tank, actively trawling the internet for brand-new viruses, and studying them as they appear, would be part of an active defense against malware.
  - john_b 13y ago
    I'm not saying it's not prudent or useful, just that the NSA is framing their own malicious, self-interested actions as an innocent defensive program. Also, spying on viruses is very different than spying on people.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Ok, and you are welcome to feel that way. I'm just taking issue with what I took to be the suggestion that the phrase "active defense" is inherently a newspeak/doublespeak sort of thing.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
whatevsbro 13y ago
> The NSA said the technology has not been used in computers in the US. But of course not. The NSA wouldn't spy on Americans, would it?
- declan 13y ago
  >The NSA wouldn't spy on Americans, would it? How about domestic U.S. law enforcement? FBI, DEA, U.S. Marshals, etc.? It would be interesting to know what technologies they're using, especially when there's a long-running surveillance operation.
justin66 13y ago
I'll be more inclined to believe this specific claim (tiny circuit boards, 100,000 of them) once we start seeing pictures of them, teardowns, analysis, etc. 100,000 is a lot of units to keep completely secret and one assumes that the people who've been hacked don't all have an incentive to not say anything.
- javajosh 13y ago
  Yes, I'm inclined to take this news with a grain of salt (a very tiny one, mind, given the incredibleness of this entire situation) until we see some examples. As you say, you can't keep 100k devices secret. (Although the truly paranoid might doubt the veracity of a claimed "tear down". It has become incredibly easy to accuse the NSA of doing anything, and at least be partly believed. Which, ironically, is actually a pretty good cloak of secrecy in itself!)
danielharan 13y ago
Wow, these talking points are hilarious: "We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of - or give intelligence we collect to - US companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line.''
- timdiggerm 13y ago
  Why is that hilarious? The Chinese DO that.
  - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
    Are you implying that the Chinese are more transparent than the "Most Transparent Administration In History"? Or are you taking the claim at face value? Perhaps I misunderstand?
- matthuggins 13y ago
  Oh, well if they said it, then it must be true.
FrankenPC 13y ago
On the upside, my 5 year old PC probably doesn't have this tech. I bet old PC's are going to become valuable because of this.
ajuc 13y ago
"We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of - or give intelligence we collect to - US companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line." Right.
pinaceae 13y ago
The biggest fuckup here is that the NSA allowed this kind of info about their core work, which is fully in line with their defined agenda, to leak out into the open. The damage through the Snowden leaks is massive, he did not concentrate on the misuse of the NSA against US citizen, this reveals core assets in their spying ablities. What a setback. Might as well invite foreign entities a tour of the NSA data centers. My guess is the next guy that tries such a thing gets treated very differently, too late for Snowden, he is too famous now. The next one disappears if there is only a whiff of a leak. Ms Manning might be a better example of things to come. The people overseeing Snowden's work/access should be tried though. Gross negligence, massive impact on national security.
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  It is not unthinkable that this was an approved and planned 'leak' for any number of reasons. Also this doesn't appear to have been a leak associated with Snowden. But it is certain that the Snowden leaks even being possible is a huge f'up on the part of the NSA who is supposed to be all about secrecy and data security.

150 points by kostyk 13y ago

dmix 13y ago

...And sentators are still debating bulk phone records (the first Snowden leak from six months ago) and can't even decide whether or not the NSA should require rubber-stamp court orders to access them. What are the odds senators will debate the privacy implications of hacking routers all over the world (let alone stop them from doing it)? I'd bet almost zero.

srl 13y ago
The article didn't say they hacked routers. > The NSA calls the effort an "active defence" and has used the technology to monitor units of the Chinese and Russian armies, drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and US allies including Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, the Times reported. From the viewpoint of an American: hacking the EU trade institutions, and India, bothers me. The rest is exactly what the NSA et al /should/ be doing. Saudi and Pakistan are "allies" out of necessity -- there is no history of genuine mutual trust and support. There certainly needs to be more control of who the NSA targets, and better constraints keeping them from targeting others, but pretending that all spying is bad is silly.
- amirmc 13y ago
  > "... there is no history of genuine mutual trust and support." Trust is supposed to work both ways. Before dismissing countries such as these it's worth looking at the history of relations from both sides.
  - RexRollman 13y ago
    Trust. But verify.
    - loup-vaillant 13y ago
      No. When you're managing someone, there is a status asymmetry that makes it okay. If on the other hand, a "mere" developer verified his manager's work, it would be perceived as rude. In the case of countries, any such asymmetry is meant with resentment. It is fine that the US spies on, say, Iran? Then it means Iran has lower status than the US. Then it means that an Irani citizen (denizen?) is worth less than an American citizen. While we're at it, why don't we show what we're made up of? Knocking down a building or two should teach them a lesson… It doesn't really matter that it is right or wrong to spy on another country. But it sure is dangerous, should you ever get caught.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- mkaziz 13y ago
  Cool, let's bomb their women and children, blow up their weddings and funerals, and then let's hack their computers because they don't "trust" us.
  - abduhl 13y ago
    As long as we are appealing to emotion here, let's not forget that Saudis composed nearly 80% of the 9/11 hijackers that killed our women and children and blew up our workplaces. Saudi Arabia has done little to engender trust.
    - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
      And yet we have pursued no actions against Saudi Arabia... I wonder if they have something we really need that is stopping us from declaring faceless or outright war on them?
      - mkaziz 13y ago
        Black gold.
        ItendToDisagree 13y ago
        Texas Tea.
    - loup-vaillant 13y ago
      Let's count. On the one hand, put every non-US citizen killed by the US. On the other hand, put every US citizen killed by all other countries and terrorists combined. Guess which number is vastly bigger than the other. 5-10 thousand dead in 9/11? That's peanuts, compared to the disproportionate responses that ensued. (I'm not saying it's peanuts in an absolute sense. It's still a tragedy, of course. Any death is.)
      - abduhl 13y ago
        Yes, let's. You take care of the non-US citizen part and I'll give you a low-ball for the US citizens killed by other countries number. If we use this handy wikipedia page shown below we can see that US military casualties are at a touch over 1.3 million. Let me know when you're done being facetious and/or have an answer for your number of non-US citizens killed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualti...

aet 13y ago

Why post an Al Jazeera summary of an NYT article that has already been posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7061012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7061012

krelian 13y ago
I think the NYT article didn't hit the top spot. This one has a more sensationalized title and will probably perform better. I guess you have to know your audience.
yen223 13y ago
So that in the future, you can cite two sources for this piece of information.
hnisforpolitics 13y ago
Al Jazeera has significantly more hipster cred than NYT.

curmudgeoned 13y ago

How many personnel does it require to physically compromise 100,000 machines? 1,000 people gaining access to 100 machines a piece? 100 people, breaking into 1,000 machines? Is that per year or in general? If one targeted individual owns 10 machines, then it's 10,000 people targeted by the program. If this includes organizations, bussinesses, institutional computer labs and offices, then maybe it's 1,000 offices with 100 work stations each. So, perhaps a rough estimate of the scope of the program 100 to 1,000 staff attacking between 20,000 and 1,000 targets?

Aqueous 13y ago
More likely no personnel was required because they simply paid off American manufacturers to implant these circuit boards in computers they knew were going to be shipped and used overseas. The bottom line, though? This isn't surprising. Nations spy on each other. A lot of nations have been engaging in a lot of phony outrage over our NSA spying who are doing the exact same thing, but have managed to keep it secret. Any nation who is using imported computers in sensitive operations should know enough to check those computers for possible spy hardware.
- kingkawn 13y ago
  I would be surprised if they didn't simply have them installed in all machines and only have them activated in 100,000 devices overseas. Logistically seems simpler to coordinate if component-cost is a non-issue for the agency.
  - w_t_payne 13y ago
    That is the logical implication.
    - grkvlt 13y ago
      No, that is an insane implication.
      - 13y ago

icantthinkofone 13y ago

Still they're about 100,000 computers behind the Chinese.

higherpurpose 13y ago

And yet they have very little to show for it. I'd say that at the very least there needs to be a discussion about how cost-effective this whole operation is.

jbigelow76 13y ago
>And yet they have very little to show for it You mean they "possibly" have very little to show for. This article is about bugging other nations, not terrorists. There is a lot of value to the NSA if they can claim they thwarted a terrorist attack. However there is no value to the NSA to declare that they are actively monitoring, in theory, advancements in Chinese stealth research just to prove to the citizens the tax dollars are well spent. Without knowing more about how the information was leaked and what was leaked there is no way to determine if this particular NSA activity was "worth it" or not.

stordoff 13y ago

I don't believe that the NYTimes article [1] supports Al Jazeera's title of "US physically hacks 100,000 foreign computers". That seems to be the total number of CNE operations, not just those using hardware devices. > [NSA] has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world [...] While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of [covert radio channels] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us/nsa-effort-pries-open-computers-not-connected-to-internet.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesworld&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us/nsa-effort-pries-open-c...

pnathan 13y ago

A question - how long of a lifetime would this sort of operation expect to even have? If you're shipping units en masse out, it seems rational to expect that eventually the cover would be blown when supply chain analysts send components to a reverse engineering company and get a report back.

belluchan 13y ago

None of these articles about this say the source of this information was Snowden. It also doesn't seem to be his M.O. to leak about non-privacy invading bits. Like nothing here really pushes any buttons for me other than it was leaked. A separate leak?

timdiggerm 13y ago
Either that or your concept of his MO is wrong.
unreal37 13y ago
Agree this goes against the Snowden trend. Probably not him. But since they're claiming to hack the Chinese, Russians, Saudis, and Pakistanis, this very well could be an "authorized leak" to counter the Snowden leaks. Like, the NSA actually does go after their enemies (as well as their friends). Very few Americans would oppose to them hacking Chinese Army computers.
mtgx 13y ago
Probably from the NSA itself, trying to do damage control through carefully controlled leaks that put them in a good light. "New leak says NSA spies only on the bad guys".
declan 13y ago
The Al Jazeera English article that sparked this thread was summarizing yesterday's New York Times article, which mentioned Edward Snowden's name five times.

PaulRobinson 13y ago

"Weeeeeeeeee!" The sound of Dell, Intel and other hardware tech stocks of US firms plummeting over the next 12 months as they realise they can now only sell domestically as nobody else in the World trusts them any more. Tens of thousands of jobs lost here. And of course, they'll blame it on Snowden. It was classified in part because tens of thousands of jobs relied on it. But you have to wonder if there isn't just a little bit of an air of the two-faced about this...

sp332 13y ago
If tens of thousands of jobs were at stake, maybe they shouldn't have done it in the first place. The NSA did the crime, Snowden just told us about it.
relic 13y ago
So it is your understanding that the US has only now just started spying on foreign countries? Capable nations have been spying on friends and foes for a long time, and they will continue to do so, exposed attempts will only change implementation. If countries decided they were not going to buy foreign technology, the majority of those countries would have no technology. You think Saudi, for example, will just start manufacturing their own hardware?
- PaulRobinson 13y ago
  I think Silicon Valley thrived for being the centre of the best technology in the World and the assumption that as a free and liberal nation it would not be as encumbered with spyware as hardware from say, China (which last year gave us the bluetooth malware clothes iron!). That perception is now gone. The valley will suffer. Why buy Intel when I can license the blueprints for ARM, build my own chip-fab plant for less than $1 billion and build a processor myself? And if I can do that, how much more investment do I need to build my own motherboards, displays and other components? $10 billion? Saudi makes that in oil money in a week. You really think they're going to keep buying US tech? The golden age for US tech firms is now over, and the idea that "of course" the US was spying is laughable: the assumption was always that the spying was targeted and not carte blanche over entire populations.

at-fates-hands 13y ago

>>> and has used the technology to monitor units of the Chinese and Russian armies, drug cartels And how is that going for the Drug Cartels? Doesn't seem to have an effect on them, considering they continue to operate with imprudence.

josefresco 13y ago
Gathering intelligence and taking action based on that info are two vastly different things each with their own pros and cons. Sure the US could take military or covert action against the drug cartels, but then where would American and other customers get their drugs? Who would then supply them? Sounds like a recipe for a new turf war (simply replace the existing cartels with newer, and possibly more ruthless groups) I'm not saying the US is allowing this, just that dismantling the cartels may bring a whole host of unwanted side effects.
- dailyrorschach 13y ago
  Indeed, I’m reminded of a great Season 2 episode of the West Wing, and though fictional, points out that to go up against and wipe our a drug cartel in the jungles of Colombia would require a 10 to 1 troop ratio to secure victory. Many of these narcoarmies have over 20,000 soldiers, so we’re talking quite a large expeditionary force. Certainly something to think about. Not to mention it would be a jungle war and likely resemble insurgencies. And as you note, someone will fill that void.
  - at-fates-hands 13y ago
    Most of the drug cartels have left the jungles and are now operating back in urban areas: http://www.vocativ.com/video/colombian-cocaine-factory/ http://www.vocativ.com/video/colombian-cocaine-factory/
  - josefresco 13y ago
    Mexico isn't Columbia, and 20K poorly equipped and trained "civilian" fighters are no match for well trained, well equipped US military personal. We've heard the same arguments for years about the terrain in Afghanistan and our (I'm from the US) guys seem to do quit well even on a level playing field (see the early days after 911 when the US dropped in small groups of CIA special forces). I loved the West Wing but feel they relied too heavily on the "Vietnam/Jungle" angle when proposing the feasibility of an actual "drug war" in Columbia. Also, the West Wing was aired before many of the US's major military actions in the middle east, which have arguably proven that the US can combat an insurgency (if they care enough to that is) and can operate in an "unconventional" manor. I think the worries of getting sucked into another Vietnam, or getting bogged down like the Soviets in Afghanistan have been debunked. As long as the political will is there, the US military can operate successfully in almost all combat scenarios.

ForHackernews 13y ago

> monitor units of the Chinese and Russian armies Isn't this what they're supposed to be doing? I don't really have a problem with intelligence gathering against non-allied nation state actors. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cryMVK1PwuQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cryMVK1PwuQ

kperry 13y ago
I am with you. Nice job NSA. In fact, this "technology" doesn't really surprise me at all. If an article came out that said, "NSA can't hack a computer unless it is connected to their own private LAN," then I would be pretty disappointed in my tax dollars at work :)
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  Seems like a good way to ruin a subsection of international commerce to me! Good job guys! A++ Would trust again!
pvarangot 13y ago
> Isn't this what they're supposed to be doing? I don't really have a problem with intelligence gathering against non-allied nation state actors. Shouldn't you have a problem with them getting caught then? I don't understand this defense of the NSA, no, its not what they are supposed to be doing. At least not anymore. If you are in favor of the US bullying and spying everyone they don't consider an ally then you should be outraged they can't do it efectively. They got outed by a lone contractor and your "potential enemies", or however you get to call every single other country in the world to justify the spying, now have most of the technical details they need to thwart the NSA's efforts and hence make it spend lots of your taxpayer dollars in coming up with other forms of spying.
- ForHackernews 13y ago
  > I don't understand this defense of the NSA, no, its not what they are supposed to be doing. At least not anymore. What are they supposed to be doing, then? Should the US just not have any spy agencies? Should it shift away from signals intelligence and focus on human intelligence like Israel does?

rolandukor 13y ago

The way I see this is that it is pretty much business as usual. I think that anyone who sincerely believes that capable states do not employ similar tactics within their spy apparatus is engaging in self delusion. States have historically spied on each other (allies and enemies). I can understand the sensationalist aspect of this as 'news', but IMHO there is nothing new here; move on. Perhaps, someone here with a much better command of history than I do could help out with the latest time in history where the relevant technologies of the day were not key parts of nation states' intelligence gathering systems.

waterside81 13y ago

Anecdotal evidence, but here goes. We sell software to countries worldwide - just recently we've had new customers state that they will not buy from us if we're hosting things on Amazon EC2 (which we do). They're insisting we distribute our software in such a way that it can be hosted internally on their own infrastructure.

john_b 13y ago

> The NSA calls the effort an "active defence" Newspeak is real. Even if the NSA is telling the truth about this only being deployed against foreign targets, the scale of this effort is impressive.

sliverstorm 13y ago
That's hardly newspeak. A key part of any good defense is information. Infosec to protect your own information is not sufficient. Thus, information gathering is an active part of defensive operations. Imagine you are an antimalware company (a real one, a good one). Maintaining a virus tank, actively trawling the internet for brand-new viruses, and studying them as they appear, would be part of an active defense against malware.
- john_b 13y ago
  I'm not saying it's not prudent or useful, just that the NSA is framing their own malicious, self-interested actions as an innocent defensive program. Also, spying on viruses is very different than spying on people.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Ok, and you are welcome to feel that way. I'm just taking issue with what I took to be the suggestion that the phrase "active defense" is inherently a newspeak/doublespeak sort of thing.

deleted 13y ago

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whatevsbro 13y ago

> The NSA said the technology has not been used in computers in the US. But of course not. The NSA wouldn't spy on Americans, would it?

declan 13y ago
>The NSA wouldn't spy on Americans, would it? How about domestic U.S. law enforcement? FBI, DEA, U.S. Marshals, etc.? It would be interesting to know what technologies they're using, especially when there's a long-running surveillance operation.

justin66 13y ago

I'll be more inclined to believe this specific claim (tiny circuit boards, 100,000 of them) once we start seeing pictures of them, teardowns, analysis, etc. 100,000 is a lot of units to keep completely secret and one assumes that the people who've been hacked don't all have an incentive to not say anything.

javajosh 13y ago
Yes, I'm inclined to take this news with a grain of salt (a very tiny one, mind, given the incredibleness of this entire situation) until we see some examples. As you say, you can't keep 100k devices secret. (Although the truly paranoid might doubt the veracity of a claimed "tear down". It has become incredibly easy to accuse the NSA of doing anything, and at least be partly believed. Which, ironically, is actually a pretty good cloak of secrecy in itself!)

danielharan 13y ago

Wow, these talking points are hilarious: "We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of - or give intelligence we collect to - US companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line.''

timdiggerm 13y ago
Why is that hilarious? The Chinese DO that.
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  Are you implying that the Chinese are more transparent than the "Most Transparent Administration In History"? Or are you taking the claim at face value? Perhaps I misunderstand?
matthuggins 13y ago
Oh, well if they said it, then it must be true.

FrankenPC 13y ago

On the upside, my 5 year old PC probably doesn't have this tech. I bet old PC's are going to become valuable because of this.

ajuc 13y ago

"We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of - or give intelligence we collect to - US companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line." Right.

pinaceae 13y ago

The biggest fuckup here is that the NSA allowed this kind of info about their core work, which is fully in line with their defined agenda, to leak out into the open. The damage through the Snowden leaks is massive, he did not concentrate on the misuse of the NSA against US citizen, this reveals core assets in their spying ablities. What a setback. Might as well invite foreign entities a tour of the NSA data centers. My guess is the next guy that tries such a thing gets treated very differently, too late for Snowden, he is too famous now. The next one disappears if there is only a whiff of a leak. Ms Manning might be a better example of things to come. The people overseeing Snowden's work/access should be tried though. Gross negligence, massive impact on national security.

ItendToDisagree 13y ago
It is not unthinkable that this was an approved and planned 'leak' for any number of reasons. Also this doesn't appear to have been a leak associated with Snowden. But it is certain that the Snowden leaks even being possible is a huge f'up on the part of the NSA who is supposed to be all about secrecy and data security.